Sector specific business support

In partnership with MENTA (The Suffolk Enterprise Agency), Care Development East can now provide specialist business advice and support to care providers.

All the advisors are specialists in business advice who have also been trained in the specific challenges and current changes faced by the adult social care sector.

The advisors can help you with most aspects of running, sustaining and growing your business or organisation. This can include advice and support with, but is not restricted to:

Sustaining your business in a changing landscape

Expanding your business into new areas

Marketing your services effectively

Business planning

Succession planning and recruitment

Business finance

The advisor will work with you to develop a bespoke coaching plan to address your highlighted area of need. You will then work with the advisor for up to 16 hours on a one to one basis to work through your agreed plan.

This service is available to all parts of the adult social care sector and to both private and third sector organisations.

This service is fully funded but we can only fund a certain number each financial year. If you are interested in accessing this service please contact the team at Care Development East, as soon as possible to register interest.

Award-winning care provider finds service very useful

One care provider who has taken advantage of this service with beneficial results is Ruth French of Stowlangtoft Healthcare, pictured on the right with her brother Roger Catchpole and mother, Cath Catchpole.

Ruth is partner and operations director at Stowlangtoft Healthcare, an award-winning business she runs with her mother and brother. It was founded in 2010 and operates three care homes in Brandon, Thetford and Stowlangtoft.

Prior to joining the business she spent a decade working for central Government, including the Cabinet Office, so her expertise has allowed her to take the lead in her care business’s policy development, training, and implementation.

Ruth took up the offer of free one-to-one support from MENTA around the area of business marketing. She said: “As a small, independent provider of two healthcare homes, we do not have big back office functions. We have to be the specialists in every area, and so we do need to be able to reach out to get support.

“We had a visit from Leanne Castle from MENTA and she came and looked around the home and talked to us about our business priorities and where support would be most effective. She was able to pair us up with a marketing and communications agency as well as provide useful routes into organisations such as Age UK Suffolk, with whom we are now working in partnership and have made other local contacts which have been really useful. We have beautiful communal spaces here, and links with local organisations means they can use them as venues for their events.”